My web site has been visible just fine until recently. Now, if I try to access it with
name.com, the system says there is no such site, or some such gibberish. Also, I can't get my email. But if I use either 162.42.131.36/~username or WebNameHost/~username, I can see it just fine. On my computer at work there is no problem. What gives? This is just like when the domain was new.

nhacker wrote:My web site has been visible just fine until recently. Now, if I try to access it withname.com, the system says there is no such site, or some such gibberish. Also, I can't get my email. But if I use either 162.42.131.36/~username or WebNameHost/~username, I can see it just fine. On my computer at work there is no problem. What gives? This is just like when the domain was new.

There are three possible reasons why a web site may become inaccessible:
1. The box hosting it might be down. This hasn't happened for several months, and that was for maintenance.
2. The network between you and the box is down. This happens frequently, and is usually because someone is attacking a machine somewhere in either your net neighbourhood or that of the box. However, in this case you wouldn't be able to get the account at all. Such problems last for between a few hours and a few days.
3. Most likely what has happened in your case was that a temporary net outage (which can take many forms) took place and a machine between you and the WebNameHost box in question decided your site wasn't there. This result, unfortunately, can be stored (cached) at any number of intermediate stops so that the next query results not in a check back to WebNameHost for the current status, but instead, the intermediate machine looks in its own cache and says "hey, I checked this before; there's no such account" and it tells you that. In all liklihood, people served by other ISPs than yours can see the site just fine.

The solution in the latter case:
a. use WebNameHost/~username for now and wait 1-3 days. The problem will go away by itself.
b. contact the technical support people at your ISP and ask them to clear their DNS cache. If they were the ones caching the bad result, the problem should go away immediately. If it was a machine farther up the chain, this solution may not work.

Note that there are tools accessible from the WebNameHost site to check on the styatus of your site and trace a route to it from various places so you can usually determine if the site is really down.